FARGO —Not that it’s a race, but North Dakota State extended its lead in leading Division I FCS in scoring defense over the weekend with a shutout of Illinois State. The performance was so convincing that the Redbirds not only didn’t sniff the end zone but they had a hard time seeing it.
The closest they got was 29 yards. NDSU and it’s 7.2 points given up per game average return home on Saturday to face Missouri State, a team that features one of the best receiving corps in the Missouri Valley Football Conference and a quarterback, Jason Shelley, who has thrown for over 1,600 yards.
“They’re playing at a high level right now,” Bison head coach Matt Entz said of his defense. “Extremely confident.”
NDSU improved to 6-0 overall and 3-0 in the Valley in maintaining its No. 3 ranking in both the Stats Perform media and FCS coaches top 25 polls. Avoiding the upset has been a key component, something that plagued the likes of Montana, James Madison and UC Davis in the last couple of weeks.
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About the only hitch in NDSU’s armor has been figuring out a blitz-happy 3-4 defense that the University of North Dakota and Illinois State threw at the Bison. NDSU held off UND 16-10 three weeks ago.
The Bison struggled to finish off the Redbirds on a few drives on Saturday. A chunk of that, Entz said, comes down to the players recognizing particular blitz situations.
“You can’t try to run everything into the pressure,” he said. “Now you have to make a decision: Are you going to run into the pressure? Run it away? I think there are some things we can narrow down but it’s going to require some decision making by the players on the field. We put a lot into our players’ hands and our quarterback making the adjustments based on safety rotation. Where the pressure looks like it’s coming from.”
Entz said quarterback Quincy Patterson has a “fair amount” of freedom at the line of scrimmage to change a play. It’s no different than what Cam Miller had last spring or Trey Lance in 2019.
“He does have the ability to get us in and out of plays, change protections,” Entz said. “He’s had that since becoming a starter. The volume of offense has grown but not everything is good against certain fronts and coverages so we have to make sure we do a good job of streamlining our package so he can execute.”
Missouri State is a traditional 4-3 team, four defensive linemen and three linebackers, so some of that angst may be alleviated just based on alignment. The Bears have shown some signs of good defensive play, losing 23-16 at Oklahoma State in the season opener and stopping Indiana State 37-7 last Saturday.
They’re 4-2 and ranked 17th in the Stats Perform and No. 18 in the coaches polls. It’s been a different story under second-year head coach Bobby Petrino, who brought in several transfers and transformed the roster to a playoff-challenging caliber.
At the least, NDSU will run into more explosive players against the Bears than they did against the Redbirds.
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“I always get extremely nervous on explosive plays, like a couple weeks ago against Northern Iowa,” Entz said. “But one thing I’m pleased with is the effort and energy our kids play with on the defensive side.”
